War and the Soul

I’ve long been traveling the world in search of psychological and spiritual truths. Long before blogs, I sent back "letters to the world." Now, though I’m on an American author tour, I want to continue sharing my letters. I’m excited for this dialogue on the nature of war, its true costs, and the possibilities for healing. I trust you’ll carry our discussions to your communities and we can all bring our intentions to bear on healing our neighbors, our country, and the planet.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Dear Friends,

In Peru, Illinois, two grandparents in their sixties beg help in tolerating their fear and pain over their son's service in Iraq. He has only been there a few weeks, they say, and he has already changed beyond recognition. But worst is the way their granddaughter suffers by the minute as she lives without her daddy. She cannot sleep or talk coherently or stop crying or perform in school. And in spite of consulting with therapists, the grandparents can find no help for her. Our present war is destroying three generations of this sweet, good family.

In a tiny midwestern crossroads coffee shop not even on the map, a 100% disabled veteran told of his grandfather's endless torment after WWI and his father's after WWII. "Never glorify war," his father taught him after "the good war." This vet confessed that he was never in combat. Rather, he was severely traumatized during his training to be a helicopter door gunner "in a Huey that was shot down 6 times in Viet Nam." He says, "It was enough to destroy my mind just to learn that I could kill hundreds without blinking." But his final initiation into disability was effected by his commanding officer on his first night overseas. The officer got him drunk, then raped him. Afterwards, the c.o. spread sexual rumors across the base so that the grunt's peers turned against him and beat him with 2x4s until he sustained brain damage.

I heard similar stories everywhere I traveled during my recent 10 day book tour to launch WAR AND THE SOUL in the northern Heartland of our country -- up and down the western coast of Lake Michigan and west into central Illinois. In Racine a homeless veteran emerged from his alley carrying unremitting pain decades old. In Wheaton another vet, shoeless as his final attempt to gain grounding, revealed that he participated in the military's drug experiments to wipe out normal fear and create monster-soldiers. In Marseilles, a Viet Nam vet waited in the back of a bookstore until I was alone, then crept forward to confess four decades of suffering and isolation that he fears will never lift. In Oakton, a man confessed for the first time in his life that during WWII he had crouched hidden for six hours with his mother in their shattered basement, sitting on a can while bombs destroyed their village and his guts lost all control. "I've felt ashamed my entire life," he lamented. "Why have I never told this story before?"

In these many poignant moments, one occurred in Marseilles, Illinois where I prayed in front of their new monument. It is perched on the banks of the Illinois River, just across from the locks of the dam built during the depression. The monument consists of 8 stone pillars, each about four feet wide and high. They are etched with the names of the 2,080+ servicemen and women killed in Iraq thus far. The bottom rows are freshest. New names are carved into these pillars regularly so the monument stays up to date. New for America, many women's names are scattered through the list of war dead. And two stones remain blank. The locals say with sad shakes of their heads, "They won't be empty for long. We're just awaiting the newest casualties. We're frightened we didn't erect enough pillars to carry all the dead this war will create." Most poignant are the reminders -- boots, letters, children's toys -- placed beneath the names of lost loved ones. Imagine a 6 year old leaving her yellow stuffed doggy beneath Mommy's name on the cold banks of the roiling midwestern river.

All these people and more came out for events connected with WAR AND THE SOUL. In my book, I explain that what we call Post-traumatic Stress Disorder is not an individual psychopathology, but has its roots in our community and spirituality and can only be healed by communal and spiritual means. War's unrelenting destruction and suffering are too big to be healed by conventional methods. It belongs to all of us. These book events became events for some of our Heartland communities to gather, to share and witness, to confirm this suffering, and to lift the burdens of war pain for all our afflicted veterans and their families and share them with the community.

I learned some very important lessons in our Heartland. In the pain of war the distinction between "red" and "blue" states disappears. These Heartland folks are all very good people. They love their farms, their small towns, their children, neighbors, and cows. They deeply love the ideals our country represents. They were good people following their country to war because they believed what they were told, that we were under severe and immediate threat, as though some evil empire wanted to take their farms from them. They did not know beforehand of the lies, of the terrible deeds they or their loved ones would be called to commit, of the sacrifices their entire families and communities would have to make, and the unrelenting pain and loss they would suffer, and the disillusionment they would feel that spreads like poison through us all.

During these healing events that WAR AND THE SOUL engendered, there really was no distinction between red and blue, old and young, liberal and conservative, healer and afflicted. We all joined to share the pain and loss that truly belongs to all of us. We were all united in concern for our veterans past and present, for their families, for the harm done to our country's ideals and moral stature, and to the planet. How ironic and moving that the pain of this war can be a wound that unites us all.

These stories from the Heartland arise from the wounded heart of our country and its people. May we all learn from they and unite in healing.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Last night I presented WAR AND THE SOUL at Transitions Bookstore in Chicago. I inquired whether anyone in the audience was a veteran. One woman said she was. When asked her story, she explained, "My father was a World War II veteran. He was in brutal combat in the Pacific. It so affected his life that growing up with him was like living in a war zone. That makes me a veteran too!"

This woman's wisdom and pain must not be ignored. She understod, through difficult personal experience, that when one family member goes to war, war not only distorts that individual but is also inevitably passed on to spouse, children, and the community. Some Native American communities report that nearly their entire adult male populations are combat veterans. Such communities can become like war zones or armed camps themselves, rampant with violence, fear, substance abuse, instability of every kind. As the woman in the bookstore and the evidence of these small communities tell us, the effects of war ripple throughout our communities and down the generations, affecting and infecting everyone who lives with veterans troubled by the aftereffects of war.

We cannot escape the reach of war. When one of us has gone to war, we all have gone. When one of us is infected by its horror and poisons, we all are.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Dear Friends,

Thank you for joining me as I begin my author's tour for my new book WAR AND THE SOUL.

As some of you may know, I lead healing and growth journey abroad to Greece and Viet Nam. I take many veterans as well as people seeking psychospiritual healing and adventure to some of the most fascinating and mysterious places on the planet. When I travel, I always write "letters from the world" in order to share the wisdom, learning and healing gained, and to help knit our world together into one great and cooperative community. Certainly a book tour, especially about a topic as critical to us all as modern war, counts as one of these adventures. I am happy to do my best to bring you along and share the questions, insights, concerns, suffering, community that becomes active and available when we go out into our cities and towns and discuss what concerns us all the most. Please feel free to write your own thoughts, questions and concerns as we travel together.

Tonight officially begins my book activities. Let me share how I left my town of Albany, NY to begin this road trip to talk about modern war.

Over 100 veterans from all modern wars are represented in WAR AND THE SOUL. One of them is named Walt. He testifies in my book to the terrible damage down to his soul, his spiritual center, his moral code, sense of worth, and religious and ethical sensibilities by his service in Viet Nam during that war. And he didn't even kill. He considers his greatest crime to be digging up a mass grave of Vietnamese with his back hoe and moving them to another location so that the smell did not offend a visiting general.

I visited with Walt for the last time at the Veterans Adminstration hospital in Albany just before leaving. He is only in his early 50s. He is dying of Agent Orange related cancers. This man, who was once vital, brilliant, philosophical, searching, now looks like a concentratiion camp victim. He is pencil thin. His brain seems to be shrinking. He can barely utter a few words and even those take a very long time.

Walt was in a combat veterans group I facilitated 15 years ago during the first Gulf War. Of the 8 veterans who were in that group, he will be the fourth to die of old war wounds. The other 3 did not even make it to ageg 50! Two died of Agent Orange illnesses, and the third of a massive heart attack. At his funeral his parents said, "Our son was killed in Viet Nam. It just took this long for it to catch up to him."

This is what modern war is and does. The pain and suffering do not end when the guns are silenced. The pollution of body, soul, earth, community, society, infrastructure do not stop, do not go away, continue for generations. In Viet Nam today, about 35,000 babies are born every year with severe Agent Orange deformities. Our own veterans are seeing disabilities in their children and grandchildren.

When we make war in this modern technological way, for controversial and debatable political ends, these kinds of wounds -- Post-traumatic Stress Disorder to the soul, terrible damage to the body and land -- are inevitable. We Americans are not aware of these enormous costs. But we must be! And we must ask if the costs are worth the gains.

Modern war teaches that war is not and can never be an answer to human conflicts. The psyche, the body, the earth can no longer tolerate it. This is not about right or left, liberal or conservative politics. War can no longer be a political tool for anyone. And we must tend our wounded and the wounded of other lands with utmost love and generosity.

About Me

I am 54 years old. I came of age during the Vietnam War. I protested that war, even when I was not in danger of service, but truly began to learn about it beginning in 1979 when my first veteran clients came for therapy and asked me to help relieve terrible and life-destroying suffering. Post-traumatic stress disorder was not even a diagnosis yet, but we dug in and began the psychological exhumations that revealed the true face of war and gave them hope of healing.
Since that time, I’ve studied war and violence, numerous specialties in psychology including the archetypal, the warrior tradition in various cultures, world spiritual traditions, world literature on war. Devoted to bringing true healing to suffering survivors, I’ve worked with healers and veterans in the Native American, ancient Greek, and Vietnamese Buddhist traditions. I’ve traveled all over the country and world to meet survivors and work with healers who can bring some light to bear on this terrible suffering. As a result, I’ve been able to create strategies and bring solutions for healing that pass far beyond our conventional ways and enter the realm of the spiritual, where healing from war is truly possible.